I do not consider myself to be a “religious” person, so no one could be more surprised than myself that I have a religion. But I believe that Bahá’u’lláh (Prophet founder of the Bahá’í Faith) is Who He claimed to be, and so I have no choice but to be Bahá’í. 

The story begins in my childhood and school days. 

Our parents did not bring us up as churchgoers, nor send us to Sunday School, and for this I am profoundly grateful, because when I encountered the Bahá’í Faith my mind was open and I was not veiled by names. 

Religious education (‘RE’; or ‘Form Scripture’ as it was called in the 1950s and 1960s) was a compulsory subject at school. It consisted of instruction on the Old Testament and the New Testament but was very badly taught. The Old Testament, including Moses and the Ten Commandments, comprised of endless histories of people squabbling and fighting with each other. It was difficult to see what they had to do with religion. But the drawings of pyramids, deserts and camels that illustrated some of the textbooks were interesting. The New Testament consisted of parables and miracles, neither of which I could ever understand, as they weren’t adequately or satisfactorily explained by our teachers. Perhaps they didn’t understand them either. 

And then there was the problem of the exclusivity of Christianity, the insistence that unless a person believed in Jesus they were, essentially, lost beyond redemption. What about all the other people in the rest of the world for whom, for centuries, there was absolutely no possibility to hear about Jesus? The Christian God was very, very unjust, and that seemed to be very un-Christian. 

By the time I reached my mid- to late teens I was thoroughly confused and (I guess) agnostic. 

Something else also happened in my mid- to late teens; I understood the necessity for world government and a world parliament, but I couldn’t figure out how to make it work because of political parties. 

Then I went to university. It was my first time living away from home. I was nineteen years old and had led a very sheltered life. I knew few people beyond my immediate family, parents’ friends, and school. I had had no real friends at school, and my life up to then had consisted mostly of school, homework, and exams. I hadn’t known which of my shortlist of universities to rank first on my application form. My history teacher said, ‘Why don’t you put Durham first? It’s got a lovely cathedral.’ And so, in early October 1972, after a long train journey, I arrived early one afternoon at St Mary’s College in Durham. 

The first person I met after being shown to my room and depositing my bags was a young woman from a room two doors down the corridor. She was Persian (or Iranian, as we would say now), but spoke perfect English. I’d never met a Persian person before. The only non-Europeans I had ever encountered were the West Indians and Asians who were a significant element of the population of Sheffield, where I had lived until the age of thirteen. I had no prejudices or preconceptions; my mind was open. 

My new acquaintance introduced herself as Samireh ‘Sammi’ Anwar. She was going to be studying Persian and Arabic. At her first opportunity, probably on the second day, and in response to a thoroughly naïve question on my part, she told me her religion was Bahá’í. I hadn’t heard of Bahá’í before, and because I hadn’t met any Persians before and had no expectations or preconceptions whatsoever, it was easy for me to accept that Bahá’í was a real, valid religion and not some weird cult. At that early stage, in my naivety and ignorance, I probably thought that all Persians were Bahá’í. 

Very soon, I learned enough to know that Bahá’í was the religion that answered my questions. It was progressive and non-exclusive. It was unconditionally accessible to all the peoples of the world. And it contained the answer to my idea about a world government and a world parliament. If I was going to have a religion, it would probably be Bahá’í. 

Sammi quickly attracted a circle of friends. Those of us who were closest to her and most interested in Bahá’í were continually in her company. She introduced us to Trevor Finch, who was studying at Neville’s Cross College, the teacher training college, and took us to homes in the town to meet other Bahá’ís. We were frequent visitors to firesides at Oliver and Karianna Christopherson’s house. Sometimes John and Kathleen Coates or Shahram Firoozmand would come down from Newcastle for the evening. 

Towards the end of our first term Sammi announced that she was going to get married to someone called Peter Smith, who lived in Bristol. She booked a bus to take a group of us down to Bristol for the wedding in February. In a letter to my parents (there was not much phone-calling in those days!), I told them that I would be attending the wedding of one of my friends and that it would be ‘interesting’ because it would be a Bahá’í wedding. That was probably the first time I mentioned Bahá’í to my parents. 

Then Sammi announced that in March she would be fasting. Her little group of hangers-on, myself included, were curious as to what it was like to fast. So, we decided to fast with her. It was not exactly a spiritual experience; rather, we experienced the physical discipline of refraining from food and drink from sunrise to sunset. 

I and my friends were so obviously very attracted by the Bahá’í teachings. A Dutch student, a staunch atheist, who lived on the floor below said to me: “You are going to become a Bahá’í, Judith, aren’t you? I know you are.” 

The truth was, I was hanging back. I had been brought up without religion. I would be breaking the mould set by my parents. Sometimes I asked awkward questions, such as: ‘Shoghi Effendi was like the Pope, wasn’t he?’ 

Sometime during the spring or summer term, maybe in April or May, a member of our group, a student from a strong Christian background, declared their faith in Bahá’u’lláh. The brink was approaching. Or was I approaching the brink? 

One evening after our exams, we went to a fireside at the Christophersons’ house. John and Kathleen Coates were there. I asked one of my awkward questions. This time it was an objection to the burial laws. Somewhere inside, I think I knew that it was a last stand, a final attempt at resistance. John answered me. I cannot remember his exact response, but it was to the effect that our love for Bahá’u’lláh kindles a desire within us to obey His laws. 

On my way home that evening I knew that I loved Bahá’u’lláh and believed that He was Who He claimed to be. I had heard His words “Here am I. Here am I”; His grace had raised me up and led me unto Him. The date was 16 Nur 130 B.E. (20 June 1973). 

There were three of us who, one by one, declared our belief in Bahá’u’lláh. Two of us were booked to go on a field trip in the Lake District. Sammi said that we must attend the Nineteen Day Feast on 24 June and gave us the phone number of a lady called Madeline Hellaby. We telephoned Madeline and she arranged to collect us in Grasmere on the day of the Feast and take us to her home in Kendal. Sammi had contacted her to tell her about us, but when she picked us up, she told us, “Of course, I phoned the National Office to make sure that you really were Bahá’ís”. How very Madeline! 

And so, I attended my first Nineteen Day Feast in the Hellaby home in Kendal. All the family were there, plus a few other believers, among whom I remember Phoebe Brown. 

After completing my degree in Durham I spent the next academic year at Liverpool University. The Bahá’í Centre was an upstairs room in a house on Ullet Road, next door to which lived Pat Brackenridge. Hooman Momen was also in Liverpool at that time. I don’t remember the names of any other believers of the Liverpool community at that time; George and Elsie Bowers had already left to serve in Haifa. 

After Liverpool, I lived and worked at Castle Howard in North Yorkshire for five years (1976–1981). The nearest Bahá’í community was York, fifteen miles away. To begin with, I did not drive and it was difficult if not impossible to attend Bahá’í meetings. After getting a car and learning to drive, I was able to participate in Bahá’í activities in York. Muriel Evans, who with her husband had gone as a missionary to the Canadian Arctic and had learned about the Faith through Jameson and Gail Bond, Knights of Bahá’u’lláh to Franklin Island, was a long-term member of the York community, as were Daryoush and Denise Mazloum and their young family, Sam and Fleur. Sadly, Denise died of a heart attack in December 1980, leaving Daryoush, Sam, Fleur and baby Gabrielle. Other believers in York at that time included Marian d’Netto and an elderly gentleman called Oswald.  

I remember going with Muriel Evans to spend a weekend with Lucy Hall in the village of Storth in Westmorland. Lucy’s father, E.T. Hall, was one of the early believers in Manchester who had gone to Liverpool to greet ‘Abdu’l-Bahá (eldest son of Bahá’u’lláh) on His return from the United States. He had also met the young Shoghi Effendi (the Guardian of the Bahá’í Faith) when the latter visited Manchester during his time in Oxford. Friends in Kendal, Joe and Dorothy Foster and their young family, and Roger Wilkinson, were other believers whom we saw from time to time.  

Victor and Veronica Priem and their daughters Fiona and Becky lived in Ripon, so sometimes I would go to Ripon instead of York for the Feast and stay overnight, driving back to Castle Howard the following morning. Hasan Ansari and his daughter Nooshin lived in Harrogate, and I would see them from time to time, generally in Ripon. (Later, when I was working in Haifa, I learned that Hasan was the uncle of a woman who worked in my office and had come to Haifa from Turkey.) During my time in North Yorkshire, John Butler declared his faith in Leeds and was a regular visitor to York, pioneering there in 1983. In Selby, to where Olinga Ta’eed had pioneered while a student at Leeds University, Audrey and Keith Mellard declared their faith.  

At some point during my time in Yorkshire, Madeline Hellaby decided to appoint me as one of her assistants. As a result, I met a couple of isolated believers, Arthur and Marion Norton, originally from Bradford, who had retired to Scarborough. I started visiting them as regularly as I could. The Nortons had deputised Philip Hainsworth to pioneer to Uganda during the Africa Campaign. Arthur had served on the National Spiritual Assembly for a number of years, and the couple had pioneered to Sheffield during the Six Year Plan. I remember taking Madeline Hellaby to see them when she was visiting me and arranging for Lois Hainsworth to come up from London to visit them. 

I left Yorkshire in the autumn of 1981. Some months earlier, I had known that it was time to move on, but where to? Sometime in the early spring, a notice was published saying that the Universal House of Justice was looking for an archivist to serve at the World Centre. Madeline Hellaby telephoned to suggest I offer my services. That summer, I received an invitation to serve. On 31 October 1981, which was the anniversary of the Birth of Bahá’u’lláh according to the Muslim calendar, I arrived in Haifa, And so began a new chapter in my life and 22 years and 7 months of service to the Supreme Institution, the Universal House of Justice. 

Judith Oppenheimer

January 2026